Mayo man given suspended sentence for possessing child sexual abuse material - Courts News Ireland

A Mayo man with serious mental health issues has been given a suspended sentence after he was caught in possession of child pornography five years ago. Gardaí seized a laptop belonging to Peter Murphy (27) of Carnalecka, Ballinrobe, Co Mayo, which contained over 100 images and videos of child pornography featuring children as young as four. In a hearing at Castlebar Circuit

A Mayo man with serious mental health issues has been given a suspended sentence after he was caught in possession of child pornography five years ago.

Gardaí seized a laptop belonging to Peter Murphy (27) of Carnalecka, Ballinrobe, Co Mayo, which contained over 100 images and videos of child pornography featuring children as young as four.

In a hearing at Castlebar Circuit Criminal Court, Murphy affirmed a signed plea of guilty to possessing the illicit material on four dates between July and August 2021.

In a ruling today/yesterday (FRIDAY), Judge Eoin Garavan set a headline sentence of two and a half years but reduced this to 18 months suspended, due to mitigation including Murphy’s mental health difficulties.

The court heard Murphy was diagnosed with autism, OCD and dyspraxia in primary school and also suffered from anxiety and depression and was a victim of bullying.

Judge Garavan said a custodial sentence was not warranted in what he described as a ‘sad case’, but said the real victims were the children who were used and abused and their images shared anonymously online.

The court heard gardaí found a total of 74 images and 27 videos featuring explicit scenes of a sexual nature involving girls aged 11, 8 and approximately four years’ old and a boy of five years’ old.

One of the files depicted the rape of a 12-year-old girl, the judge said.

‘This was seriously damaging and graphic material of a shocking nature. It causes lifelong damage to those children,’ said the judge, placing the case as being at the medium range of offending.

‘It’s done for adults’ perversions and for commercial reasons, there’s a market out there for this dark material. Some people are getting sexual kicks from it, others are making money,’ he said.

Judge Garavan said while the case was initially presented as if Murphy had downloaded the materials in error, the evidence showed that he knew about it, accessed the files and separated them from swathes of more mainstream material that he downloaded.

The court heard that Murphy created four files on his desktop containing the child pornography and named them ‘Bad Files’, ‘Look up and Delete,’ ‘EU Safe’ and ‘Don’t Touch Stuff Seriously Don’t’.

Detective Garda Seán Ryan told Patrick Reynolds BL, prosecuting, that 50 of the images and videos were rated as Category 1, the most serious listing.

The court heard Murphy created shortcuts on the desktop screen and used several applications including Windows Media Player and Microsoft Movies to view the material on four different occasions in the early hours of the morning, then deleted the material a few hours later.

Gda Ryan agreed with Conall MacCarthy SC, defending, that the files were moved into the Recycle Bin after viewing in a ‘crude, unsophisticated and immature attempt’ at removing them.

Mr MacCarthy said there was no evidence of multiple viewing of any of the images or videos and that none of the material had been shared or distributed.

The court heard Murphy had a difficult childhood and that during Covid, had found himself increasingly at home playing children’s Super Mario type games ad nauseam.

‘He could play for days on end,’ said Mr MacCarthy, adding that the offences were committed against a backdrop of diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder and OCD.

‘This manifested itself in obsessive downloading and viewing materials from the internet, effectively going into a dark hole,’ he added, pointing out that only a very small percentage of the downloaded material came within the garda radar.

The court heard that Murphy has no previous convictions and cooperated fully with gardaí.

He expressed very significant remorse and was described as a ‘particularly vulnerable person who comes from a decent family’.

Judge Garavan ordered Murphy to abide by the supervision of the Probation Services for a year and follow all directions, including attending individual counselling, training and employment officials and completing a sexual offenders’ programme if deemed appropriate.